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Next week The Monuments Men(directed by and starring George Clooney) is set to hit silver screens. The film is based on the true story of a band of American scholar-soldiers whose mission in WWII was to recover stolen artifacts from what is perhaps the most ambitious theft in history: Nazi art-looting.

One of Hitler’s many troubling ambitions was to erect a grand museum in his hometown of Linz, Austria, to house a massive pan-European collection of fine art looted throughout the war. In pursuit of this goal—the creation of the eponymous Führermuseum—the Nazi army developed an extensive art-plundering apparatus responsible for ferrying masterpieces across the continent to secret storage depots where the centuries-old cultural inventory was stowed away for safekeeping (or alternately, held hostage as wartime bargaining chips).

Under the Nazi-sympathetic Vichy government, France became a staging ground for this artistic exodus. Like Hitler, the Vichy Secretary General of Art, Louis Hautecour, expressed a fundamental disdain for modernist aesthetics, preferring the rationality of Latinate classicism to the abstraction of surrealism and expressionism. Hitler quite famously eschewed the latter styles, regarding them as “degenerate” art, asymptomatic of Aryan superiority.

In hopes of boosting what he saw as the flaccid morale of the French people, Hautecour embraced classicism—and its connotations of imperial inheritance, high culture, and artistic accomplishment—as the French national style. So too, did the Third Reich, in deference to the Führer’s artistic predilections.

The shifting pendulums of power and cooperation set the stage for an art world rife with opportunism as French curators and conservationists vied with Nazi collectors and soldiers for the artwork orphaned by the war’s tumult. Hitler commissioned extensive research into France’s artistic holdings and designated museum director, Otto Kümmel, to compile an inventory of artwork in France that would serve as a guiding index for Nazi “repatriation.” The Kümmel Report, took stock of all works that met the criteria of somehow representing German patrimony and culture including German works held abroad, Napoleonic war spoils, and (more loosely interpretable) art that in some way reflected Germanic character.

The primary targets for German “repatriation” were Jewish proprietors of private art collections. Thousands upon thousands of stolen artwork passed through the Jeu de Paume—a Parisian museum—on its way to Germany. Only one unassuming employee was permitted to continue working in the Nazi-commandeered museum. Rose Valland (whose character is the basis for Cate Blanchett’s Claire Simone in the film adaptation), turned spy at the direction of the Vichy government’s Director of National Museums, and tracked the Nazis' art shipments under the guise of maintaining the building. At the war’s denouement her intel earned her a captaincy in the French army where she served as a crucial liaison to the American platoon known as the Monuments Men, whose teams traced the journey of the pillaged objects to the Reich’s secret art depots.

Top American curators served in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (aka ‘Monuments Men’) including James Rorimer, future director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum (his Hollywood reincarnation, James Granger, is played by Matt Damon). Together with Valland, the Monuments Men embarked on one of the greatest treasure hunts in history, unearthing thousands of intact objects from Austrian salt mines and German castles. All told the Allied forces recovered approximately 61,000 art pieces that had been seized from France, alone.

Today, at the Colorado Center for Literature and Art in Denver, Elizabeth Campbell Karlsgodt will delve into a discussion on Nazi art looting and the history behind the soon-to-debut film The Monuments Men. Karlsgodt is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Denver and author of Defending National Treasures: French Art and Heritage Under Vichy. See more details on her presentation here and for more information on the Monuments Men, check out this featurette from the upcoming film:

Gathered below for your perusing pleasure is a collection of our most recent 2013 book award recipients. Most of the titles below were published within the last few years and represent a full spectrum of disciplines from business, to literature, to law. Congratulations to our authors and editors for their excellent work.

Anthropology

Best Book of the Year, Times Literary Supplement & Outstanding Book in Nonprofit Voluntary Action Research, ARNOVA

Palestine Book Awards, Middle East Monitor

Business & Economics

Morris Rosenberg Award, District of Columbia Sociological Society

Social Justice in Education Distinguished Scholar Award, American Educational Research Association

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice

History

Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica

Mexican History Book Prize, Conference on Latin American History

Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History, ASEES and the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at UC Berkeley

Joel Beinin offers the last word in our week-long blog series on the Egyptian uprising.

by JOEL BEININ

When the popular uprising against Hosni Mubarak erupted on January 25, 2011, I followed the events from my television and computer screens at Stanford, feeling that I had not been invited to my best friend’s wedding celebration. Three years later, many observers across the political spectrum, whether gleefully or with remorse, have concluded that the party is over and have pronounced the failure of the Egyptian revolution. I beg to disagree.

Since 1979—more years than the age of two-thirds of the country’s citizens—I have visited and worked in Egypt regularly, occasionally for years at a time. The social conditions that made the 2011 uprising are rooted in the Arab defeat of 1967 and have been present since then: autocracy, police brutality, radically skewed distribution of the nation’s wealth, youth unemployment, domination of all institutions by older men. There have been periodic upsurges of oppositional mobilization since 1968. An extraordinary social movement of workers’ strikes and other contentious actions has been underway since the late 1990s and continues today, but it has not had the capacity to become a national political force.

Nothing has happened in the last three years to address the discontent that exploded in 2011. Nonetheless, the 98.1 percent “yes” vote in the constitutional referendum of January 14-15 appears to have given popular endorsement to a restoration of the Mubarak regime with even more power in the hands of the military than previously. The army and its commander, Minister of Defense ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi are absurdly popular. Many Egyptians, exhausted from three years of upheaval and seeking a restoration of “normalcy,” have made themselves forget the abuses of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ruled the country for the year after Mubarak’s demise—violence against unarmed protesters, detentions without trial, torture, “virginity tests” of young women arrested in demonstrations (justified by al-Sisi himself), failure to hold the institutions and leaders of the old regime to account for either the deaths of over 870 “martyrs of the uprising” or the systemic perversions of justice and equity for the previous decades, and a political arrangement that allowed the Muslim Brothers to acquire the lion’s share of civilian power until the military commanders called the deal off on July 3, 2013.

As the third anniversary of Egypt’s uprising nears, pessimism permeates analyses of the country’s political trajectory. The Tamarud-inspired mobilization forced the country’s lead generals back to work after a 12-month retirement from governing and Minister of Defense Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi removed the elected president, launched a political roadmap, and appointed a slew of civilians to run a state untouched by the revolution.

State violence against groups like the Muslim Brotherhood is now an accepted norm and the population, it appears, will sanction any amount of bloodletting and jailing against them. Other groups, activists, and academics have also fallen on the wrong side of this junta. Revolutionaries are arrested from their homes and now occupy the same jails from which Mubarak’s cronies are now leaving, as one court case after another clears their crimes.

How the Tahrir protests escalated and how the Muslim Brotherhood fell out of favor.

a Q&A with SAMER SHEHATA

Q:

Three years ago, what do you think Egyptians envisioned for their political future? What brought them to Tahrir?

SHEHATA: Of course, during the initial days of the uprising people were not devising detailed plans about the types of political institutions they wanted to establish after Mubarak’s departure. In fact, when the protests began they were not primarily about calling for Mubarak’s resignation. The original demands were far more modest: the removal of the despised Interior Minister (Habib Al Adly), police reform, and other political changes. But the demands quickly increased to include Mubarak’s resignation and the more all-encompassing goal of “The People want to Topple theRegime.”

One of the most common rallying cries during the eighteen days between January 25 and February 11, 2011 (the date of Mubarak’s resignation) was “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice.” “Bread” symbolized jobs, an end to poverty, economic prosperity and development. Freedom meant an end to dictatorship, tyranny, and police repression. And the call for “social justice” stood for social equity (rather than the extremes of wealth and poverty that had grown worse during the last decade of the Mubarak regime), as well as equality before the law—the demand for citizens to be treated with dignity by the state and government officials, and for the end of corruption.

By the third week of protests some in Tahrir and other parts of country had articulated very specific demands and a vision for the future that went far beyond Mubarak’s resignation. This was beautifully represented in the unfurling of a massive ten-story banner on the side of a building in Tahrir Square listing the people’s demands. They included dissolving both houses of parliament, lifting the state of Emergency, the formation of a transitional unity government, an elected parliament to amend the constitution, presidential elections, and trying (before a court of law) those responsible for killing protesters (“the revolution’s martyrs”) and stealing the country’s wealth.

More generally, I think people wanted thoroughgoing political reform that would lead to the creation of a modern, efficient, and effective state based on freedom, citizenship, equality, social and economic rights, and the accountability of elected and government officials.

Q:

What precipitated the Muslim Brotherhood's fall from power? What do you think were the organization's biggest missteps?

SHEHATA: Where to begin? Morsi and the Brotherhood made so many colossal mistakes during his one year in office that it is hard (nay, impossible) to point to a single factor. However, most would date the beginning of Morsi’s demise to November 22, 2012 and his “Constitutional Declaration” placing his edicts above judicial review.

This was immediately and widely criticized as “authoritarian” and a “power grab” (and rightly so). Of course, Morsi had his reasons for doing this (e.g. he wanted to safeguard the Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly drafting a “shari‘a heavy” constitution before Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court could rule to dissolve the body). Morsi’s declaration was soon amended to become a temporary measure (until the constitution’s passage) but it was still unacceptable, as was the constitution that was eventually drafted and approved. Many Egyptians were outraged, opposition forces and parties immediately united around this issue, and the National Salvation Front was born.

The following few weeks proved equally disastrous for Morsi and the Brotherhood. When hundreds of secular, liberal and youth activists went to the presidential palace to protest the Constitutional Declaration and the proposed constitution, they were attacked by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Several people were killed and many others were injured. And during the demonstrations, senior Muslim Brotherhood figures called on their members to “defend the President and the Presidential Palace”—which was essentially a call to arms.

Morsi made a number of other terrible mistakes. He broke many of his campaign promises, (for example, he failed to appoint a woman and a Copt as Vice Presidents) and most importantly, he failed to be an inclusive leader. Rather than being a president for all Egyptians, many felt he was ruling for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, his focus seemed to be more on consolidating power than on (effectively) governing and addressing the country’s myriad problems.

However, it would be both naïve and mistaken to stop here and blame Morsi and the Brotherhood alone for the resulting crisis and his fall from power. A number of other forces were operating—sometimes in collusion—to actively undermine Morsi and ensure his demise. Elements of the Mubarak regime (the intelligence and the security forces, the military, segments of the judiciary and government-controlled media), figures in the business elite and the private media, along with some of the “liberal” opposition were actively working against Morsi and the Brotherhood, some from the very beginning, to ensure his failure. And they succeeded.

On the genesis of the early Muslim Brotherhood and the scandal that launched the group to prominence.

Much is known about the contemporary Muslim Brotherhood—the political party that enjoyed great popularity (followed by a precipitous fall from power) in the wake of the 2011 ousting of the U.S.-backed autocrat, Hosni Mubarak. Considerably less understood are the origins of the organization. In The Orphan Scandal Beth Baron describes how the Muslim Brotherhood began as a byproduct of the unfurling influence of Christian missionaries in the early 1900s, revealing just how far back this party's penchant for throwing off imperial yokes extends.

At a time when the Muslim Brotherhood has been turned once again into a pariah organization, with allegations that it is a terrorist group, it is fitting to reexamine its roots in Egypt. The story of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood is a surprising one, given its intersection with the history of American and European missionaries in the Nile Valley. The origin and spread of the first Brotherhood branches, institutions, and activities in the Canal Zone and nearby Delta were intimately connected to the trajectories of missionaries in Egypt and their evangelical activities.

This guest post by Professor of History, Nancy Reynolds considers the commodities that became prominent rallying icons during the 2011 Egyptian uprising.

One of the most trenchant calls of Egyptian protesters since the January 25th uprising has been to make visible the invisible forces of power in Egyptian society. Authoritarianism and widespread corruption under Husni Mubarak, often consolidated by broad application of the Emergency Law, hid from public scrutiny and debate, the mechanisms of state surveillance, illegal detention, torture, vote counting, and the distribution of public funds. These were only a few of the grievances that Egyptians held against their government.

Throughout the course of the revolution, mundane objects of everyday life—themselves usually invisible from public view—emerged as flashpoints of political change and its limits.

During a protest in Tahrir on December 17, 2011 the bright blue bra of a woman protester attacked by the military electrified tens of thousands of Egyptian women who came out three days later to protest the harsh policies of the new military regime. In the wake of this incident, Hillary Clinton—then serving as U.S. Secretary of State—used some of the sharpest language the U.S. had employed against the new regime of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to condemn the “systematic degradation of women” that “disgraces the new state.” The bra’s exposure became emblematic of institutional support of hidden violence against women.

Images of the “Blue Bra Girl,” as the unknown protestor became known, circulated widely in the Egyptian and international press, went viral on social media, and decked the walls of Cairo. It was a surprisingly “empty and overflowing” symbol (to borrow Joan Scott’s now iconic description of how gendered power is expressed in cultural symbols).

The protester’s face obscured by her pulled-up shirt and the clarity of her colorful bra on exposed skin rendered her recognizable “as a woman” rather than as an Egyptian protester with a particular political goal in a specific set of local circumstances. In the image’s circulation, the commodity became a stand in for the wearer, and its gender-specificity invited audiences to read a wide array of agendas into her situation.

Normally “invisible” commodities help people “recognize” a connection to others but they also can create a sense of intimacy that belies real knowledge and ultimately impedes meaningful solidarity. Egyptian graffiti artist and blogger Ganzeer pointed this out in his use of the Blue Bra Girl image, in the wake of Clinton’s comments. His art suggests that the translation of foreign identification with icons of strife into diplomatic policy is not always welcome—consider the U.S financial support of Egypt’s military.

Understanding the cultural meanings of consumer objects requires deep attention to local context. Take for example, the reaction of Tahrir’s crowds on 10 February 2011 when Mubarak announced to protesters that he would not heed their calls and step down from office. Many Egyptians picked up their shoes and waved the normally hidden soles toward the giant screens televising Mubarak’s speech. The exposure of dirty shoe soles to signal disrespect or contempt is not new or even culturally specific to the Arab world—many Americans remember the famous incident during George W. Bush’s visit to Iraq in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the President to protest the U.S. occupation. Likewise, in Egyptian popular culture, shoes have long been symbols of doubling and deception, and they have been used to signal resentment toward external imperial power.

Commodities as intimate and quotidian as bras and shoes can act as compelling instruments of mobilization because they suggest the pervasive reach of power beyond the realm of formal politics into the mundane aspects of personal lives. Three long years into the revolution, many Egyptians continue to struggle for meaningful political reform to dismantle legal institutions that contain political opposition. Increased transparency in the political process—and the legalization of public protest—could give Egyptians a reason to keep their shoes on their feet and their lingerie under wraps, if they so choose.

See the entirety of this blog series on the Egyptian uprising, beginning with the late Samer Soliman's epilogue excerpt written immediately after the outbreak of protests in Tahrir.

Professor of International Relations, Laurie Brand, discusses the political significance of claiming the term "revolution"—what it means to those with power and those who contest it.

As autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa began to tremble and tumble with the diffusion of regional protests in spring 2011, the question of how to classify these momentous events was of increasing interest to scholars. According to social science criteria, were they uprisings, revolts, or revolutions? As time has passed, the debate has continued, particularly over the ouster of Egyptian president Husni Mubarak: did this constitute a revolution, did it set in motion what might prove to be a revolution, or would it soon demonstrate itself to have been little more than a coup against a part of the ruling elite?

However important the scholarly classification of such events, the struggles over naming them by those directly contesting power have more critical implications for the future of the societies involved. Indeed, a central contested element in these transitions concerns the struggle over scripting the unfolding story. Not only is it the victors who write the history, but it is also they who oversee the incorporation of it into the narrative about the regime, a narrative which then serves to further legitimate and reinforce its power.

Since the initiation of indigenous struggles against European colonialism, the designation of an event as a “revolution” has had a strongly positive connotation because it implies the battle against an oppressive order and the promise of a new, more just system. As a result, leaders of anti-status quo initiatives have generally sought to call their movements revolutions, regardless of their proportions or intent. The modern history of the MENA region is filled with a range of events that have been called revolutions by their victorious initiators, in some cases less for the dramatic changes unleashed by them, than for the legitimacy a new leadership hopes to derive from appropriating this designation to their efforts.

The official narrative of post-1952 Egypt boasts a number of “revolutions,” including the ultimately unsuccessful ‘Urabi revolt/revolution of 1879-1882—presented as Egypt’s first anti-colonial nationalist movement—and the 1919 Revolution, which ended the British protectorate over Egypt.

However, the most influential “revolution” for Egypt’s twentieth century history was that of the Free Officers in July 1952. In its wake, power relations among the officers themselves took some months to stabilize, but the new leadership nonetheless moved ahead swiftly to consolidate its rule. As part of that process, one key instrument was the propagation of a narrative of their overthrow of the king which sought to justify its designation as a revolution. Presenting their overthrow of the king, not as a mere coup, but as the only truly successful, revolution in a line of noble nationalist uprisings going back to ‘Urabi, was key in garnering support for the new leadership.

The next example of a discursive claim to revolution came in the early days of Anwar al-Sadat’s presidency. Sadat had been a member of the same Free Officer group that overthrew the monarchy, and hence could claim a degree of revolutionary legitimacy, yet his initial assumption of power was challenged within the ruling group. In response, in May 1971 he purged several high-level opponents in what was originally termed a “corrective movement.” Sadat had neither the profile nor the power to attempt to minimize the importance of the iconic revolution of 1952. However, in short order, May 1971 was rechristened a “corrective revolution”, as the suppression of his opponents was constructed as constituting not a departure from, but a “righting” of, aspects of the 1952 revolution that had gone awry.

As Sadat’s successor, Husni Mubarak made no attempt to script a new revolutionary story. Instead, not until the extended protests of January and February 2011 that forced him to relinquish the presidency do we have the emergence of a new episode of revolution, that of 25 January.

Until the end of June of 2013, it seemed unimaginable that yet another episode of popular anti-government mobilization might be termed as a revolution so soon after 2011. Yet that is what has happened, although at present the narrative retains multiple strands. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters have continued to refer to what happened—the ousting of President Muhammad Mursi—as a coup, but given the state’s heavy-handed repression of them, their voices currently have little effect on the official narrative. On the other hand, on the anti-Ikhwan side of the spectrum there are variations in applying the term “revolution” to June 30 and its fallout. Some have sought to portray the massive demonstrations as a continuation or resumption of the 25 January revolution; others script 30 June as a separate revolution; while a smaller group has attempted to narrate 30 June as the real revolution, with the events of January-February 2011 presented as an externally supported movement behind which the now criminalized Muslim Brotherhood was the moving force.

The stakes involved in the battles over such terms are far from merely semantic in import. Such competing narratives are manifestations at the discursive level of the ongoing, at times violent, struggle over the direction of post-Mubarak Egypt. They will continue both to shape and be shaped by the political contestation that is forging the legacies of 25 January and 30 June, regardless of whether as analysts we call them revolutions, uprisings or coups.

Laurie A. Brand is the Robert Grandford Wright Professor and professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. She is also author of the forthcoming book, Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria (Stanford, 2014).

Author and anthropology professor, Jessica Winegar, penned this guest post on the symbols of Egypt's uprising. All photos featured in this week's blog series, including those seen here, are courtesty of her.

On February 2, 2011—nine days into the uprising that toppled President Mubarak—the once innocuous Egyptian flag suddenly became a contested symbol. During the prior week, displaying the flag placed one squarely in support of the revolution, and in fact its overnight ubiquity gave new life to what had, until that point, been one of the more marginal symbols of the nation (not nearly as patriotically potent as, say, the American flag is to many Americans).

But on the eve of February 1, Mubarak delivered a rousing speech on national television—a last ditch attempt to maintain power—in which he expressed his love of country, his desire to die and be buried as Egypt's president, and his promise to execute reform. After his speech celebratory gunshots rang out across the neighborhoods of Cairo (where I was living)—and within minutes it had become unclear whether or not waving the flag, or hanging it from one’s windshield or from one’s window or balcony, marked one as pro-revolution or pro-Mubarak. The next morning, Tahrir was nearly empty. It seemed that most people had reversed their view of Mubarak, and the reason to fly flags against him was over.

At about 1 pm on that same day, I scurried from the square when I saw people (hired by the regime) rushing to Tahrir astride horses and camels, armed with swords and State Security Forces-issued batons, intending to force the remaining protesters out. The streets through which I passed on the way home were now awash in Egyptian flags, hanging from open windows out of which poured the national anthem—a sudden radio sensation. I suspect it was the administration’s coordinated attempt to to re-coopt the symbol of the Egyptian flag. And for a few hours, it was difficult to glean where the people’s political sympathies really lay—with the sitting regime or Tahrir’s upstarts. Ambiguity and ambivalence ended with the subsequent brutality that unfolded in the square. The regime’s heavy-handed crackdown on the activists consolidated the opposition and sent thousands back to Tahrir to defend the protesters—a clash that would later become known as the Battle of the Camel.

Fast forward to one year later, the summer of 2012. The Muslim Brotherhood, whose youth came out that February to play a major role in keeping the square occupied, was now in power. And just as suddenly, the symbol of the beard became ambiguous, signifying anything from religiosity (in the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad), to personal style (in the tradition of young pop stars), to a rushed morning (in the tradition of the five o’clock shadow). But when the Brotherhood came to power, and particularly as they quickly and spectacularly started to make major governing mistakes, the beard came to signify allegiance to the organization and President Morsy. What to do then, if one just wore it for style or because one didn’t feel like shaving? As with the flag, the beard was a mark of allegiance—but to what exactly, was not always certain. As one man exclaimed to me when I mentioned his beard, “This is laziness! Not support for the MB!”

Of course, certain symbols that have emerged in the wake of the uprising are anything but ambiguous—and can even be determinant of life or death. On August 14, 2013 opponents of the popularly backed military coup of the democratically elected President Morsy, assembled in Cairo’s Rab`a al-Adawiyya Square to protest. After the regime killed over a thousand mostly unarmed Morsy supporters, surviving supporters and those opposed to the mass killing adopted the 4 finger salute out of mourning, to show solidarity with the dead, or alternately to express continued support of Morsy.

The gesture became ubiquitous in subsequent protests and was quickly adapted to an Internet meme: four black fingers on a yellow background. A professional soccer player was banned from Egypt’s national team for flashing 4 fingers after a goal; a child with the 4 finger sign on his school ruler was hauled into the principal’s office and remanded to authorities; and, as I write this, anyone who displays the 4 fingers can be accused of supporting terrorism and arrested, jailed, tortured, or just killed—as has happened with dozens since the August massacre.

Meanwhile, there is no symbol—not flag or beard or fingers—that can contain all of the hopes for the future that brought Egyptians to the streets en masse in January 2011. There is no agreed upon symbol for the revolution, perhaps because revolutions are long, bumpy, and contested processes. In November, when the current regime tried to install a monument in the center of Tahrir Square to honor the martyrs of the revolution, it was summarily defaced and destroyed by young men who had lost their friends and loved ones in street battles against the forces of that very regime. The apparent message: no authority but the people can claim the square for the nation.

Today another symbol is being asserted as representative of the nation and its future, that of the visage of the current Minister of Defense, Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, being lauded by many as a potential savior who can bring stability back to the country. But to bring stability means to address the grievances that led to the uprising in the first place, a job that will be nearly impossible for one person, let alone one who is part of the system that produced such grievances. As this process continues then, we can expect to see more symbols emerge, around which people will rally in support or opposition. These symbols are not “merely symbolic,” as the phrase goes, but are a key means through which Egyptians find their moral compass in difficult times.

The next post in this blog series comes from Professor of International Relations, Laurie Brand. See her discussion on the significance ofclaiming the term "revolution."

This Saturday, January 25th marks the three-year anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 uprising. Touted as the “Day of Anger,” these protests heralded the end of a regime and ushered in a new era of tumult for the Egyptian people, whose political future still remains unclear today. To commemorate this historic event, this week the blog will feature a series of guest posts from SUP authors and editors reflecting on Egypt’s recent and ongoing upheaval.

Samer Soliman was in Cairo when the uprising began, wrapping up his book, The Autumn of Dictatorship, on the subject of Hosni Mubarak's autocratic regime. Excerpted below is the epilogue he appended to the book, written just weeks into the protests and before Mubarak was forced out of office.

In early February 2011, as I looked out on the crowds in Tahrir Square, the symbolic center in the struggle for democracy, the site now known as the “Square of Freedom,” it seemed evident that this uprising was the extension of a longstanding, ongoing conflict among a number of parties: the corrupt authoritarian ruling group headed by President Mubarak, trying to maintain power; the millions of people across nearly all the major cities of Egypt, now occupying the streets; and the various political groups, each trying to steer the events toward their own aims and political preferences. But it was equally clear that something new had been achieved—a new spirit of courage, sacrifice, and solidarity among the common people who took to the streets, as well as some political gains. Hosni Mubarak, the old “patriarch,” has promised to leave his post in September 2011 after the completion of his sixth mandate, declaring on television that his only wish now was just to die in Egypt! His son Gamal and some of his allies were expelled from the National Democratic Party, the ruling party, which had seen most of its offices destroyed by furious demonstrators. The Central Security Forces, composed of hundreds of thousands of men who have repressed demonstrations and opposition since the rules of Nasser and Sadat and generally imposed terror across the country for decades, were defeated. Their forces were observed taking off their uniforms while escaping the rage of the masses. Many state security headquarters (the offices of the political police) were set ablaze. After three days of the uprising, the ruling group recognized the legitimacy of the uprising’s demands. It took yet more days before the regime sought to negotiate with the opposition, still maneuvering all the time to find ways to continue the Mubarak regime, just without Mubarak himself. The Egyptian uprising has so far lost more than 300 martyrs, caused thousands of injuries, and seen hundreds disappeared and arrested—the highest price paid by the Egyptian democratic movement in many decades. But the strength of today’s opposition groups and the willingness of the democratic movement to pay this ultimate price for regime change is not merely a coincidence of events. Indeed, it is a natural outcome of long-term structural changes in Egyptian political economy.

. . .

Ultimately, the differences between the [Egyptian uprising of 2011 and the short-lived uprising in January 1977] can be explained by the changing Egyptian political economy. The uprising of 1977 came after three years of economic liberalization (infitah), a process that created a new class of nouveau riche and generated deep resentment among state employees and the poor. As for the 2011 uprising, it takes place after now twenty years of Mubarak’s open economy initiative and after a long process of decline in state services and an increasing recourse to taxing the Egyptian population. Today, Egypt has a relatively important new middle class: financially autonomous vis-à-vis the state, relatively well educated, well connected to the external world, acquiring organizational skills and capacities via the Internet and the new modes of communication. This middle class has grown increasingly worried by the deterioration of state institutions and the incapacity of the state to stimulate successful economic development, while at the same time turning to ask for more money, such as the newly imposed property tax. In the end, a new balance of power is being forged between the government and the middle class. It is too early to predict the outcomes of the 2011 Egyptian uprising, but it is evident that we are now observing the autumn of Mubarak’s dictatorship. This uprising is not the product of euphoria among the youth, as the official media sometimes try to claim, but rather the outcome of a lengthy structural transformation in the political economy of Egypt. May the future bring democracy to this country, not a new form of authoritarianism.

Samer Soliman was an Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Political Science at the American University in Cairo. As an activist for human rights and democratic politics, he was also a frequent columnist in the Egyptian media and founder and editor of Al-Bosla a radical democratic publication. When asked by The Chronicle of Higher Educationwhat the role of the scholar-activist in Egypt was he answered, "To put my scientific knowledge and my expertise in writing at the service of the democratic movement."

Sometimes it’s art for art’s sake. Sometimes it’s an experiment in the marriage of content and form. Once it was an artisanal niche, but today it’s trickling into the mainstream.

We’re talking about book art—that is, a craft that considers the tangible book as more than a binder for the words it contains, but as an object of art in and of itself. It's an art form that celebrates the physicality of books at a time when eBooks and the digitization of reading has emphasized the disembodiment of texts, flattening all novels, tomes, and furniture assembly instructions into virtual, fully re-flowable digital files, able to conform to the settings of any given eReader, but completely devoid of any bodily identity of their own.

Perhaps in response to the homogeneity of the digital book experience, a renewed emphasis on the inimitability of the physical book finds itself in vogue with high profile writers and literary influencers. Take, for example, the Pale Fire-esque meta-novel from Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams, The Story of “S”—a book stuffed with marginalia and artisanal extras. Or consider Jonathan Safran-Foer’s most recent book, The Tree of Codes, with Swiss cheese-like pages, each one uniquely die-cut to expose different layers of text—a project Vanity Fair described as “delightfully tactile."

Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes

Tactility is a trait under siege in the world of books today, but projects like the aforementioned constitute a collective rebuttal against the creeping susurrations of the bygone era of the book as object: tangible, spatial, and unique. But these mainstream experiments in trade publishing hardly exist in a vacuum. These forays into the book art world are a staging ground for a trend in publishing that merges the production scale of a trade book with the craftsmanship of fine art.

Codex is a Berkeley-based foundation that has been preserving and promoting contemporary book-making arts and the rich history of bookbinding for the past several years. The foundation has helped artists, writers and printers explore new techniques for reimagining the book medium and, to date, has hosted four book fairs and symposia showcasing the very best of this binder-busting art form.

Their recently released art book, Book Art Object 2 is an ambitious compendium showcasing 300 diverse projects from the third biennial Codex Book Fair in 2011, the theme of which was "The Fate of the Art". Screen prints, die-cuts, concertina-style pages, stencils, scrolls and vellum abound in this 512-page volume, which also features papers presented at the 2011 symposium, penned by creators and keepers of book art from across the globe.

This art anthology is the second of Codex's publications, following their first acclaimed collection, book art object, by six years. Des Cowley, of the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, described the second volume as “an essential illustrated reference for libraries and anyone interested in the future of the physical book,” while artist, designer and typographical historian, Robert Bringhurst had this to say of both collections: “No one who cares about books and their fate in the present world should be without them.”

Although the U.S. Supreme Court declined, just yesterday, to hear a case testing the recent battery of restrictive, state-imposed abortion laws, tomorrow it will hear oral arguments for McCullen v. Coakley—a case that may have far-reaching implications for both abortion seekers and anti-abortion activists. The case hails from Massachusetts and the outcome from the court will either affirm or deny the constitutionality of an existing law that establishes a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinic entryways, a law which in practice prohibits anti-abortion activists from coming into close contact with clinic employees or patients.

Political Science professor and author, Josh Wilson notes in The Street Politics of Abortion, that much of the decades-long tug-of-war between the highly galvanized “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice” factions has played out on the stoops and sidewalks of health care clinics providing abortion services. McCullen v. Coakley is, in fact, the fourth in a series of Supreme Court cases to address clinic-front activism in the last decade. Wilson’s recent book outlines and analyzes the key precursors to this case including Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo Inc. v. Christine Williams, Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, and—most importantly—Hill v. Colorado, the case that established the legal precedent for Massachusetts’ 35-foot buffer zone which is expected to either stand as precedent or be restricted as a result of this Supreme Court decision.

What follows is a brief exposition to the McCullen case—an overview of the rise and evolution of the clinic-front protest, excerpted from Wilson’s first chapter of The Street Politics of Abortion. You can read the chapter in full here.

The anti-abortion movement has taken many forms in the four decades since [Roe v. Wade]. In the 1980s and 90s one of its identifying hallmarks was clinic-front activism. These protests took various forms, but collectively they served to publicize the cause, gain more members, give participants the feeling of empowerment via direct action, impede clinic access, and tax clinic resources. A less desirable outcome, from the anti-abortion perspective, was that this activism also spurred abortion-rights advocates to organize to directly counter these street-level tactics. While those fighting for abortion rights may have believed that they had reached their goal with the Roe decision, it quickly became clear that the Supreme Court case was just one step in a protracted and ongoing movement-counter-movement struggle.As clinic-front anti-abortion protests grew in frequency, magnitude, and intensity, abortion providers and their supporters sought ways to respond. Their search yielded its own direct action strategies, but it also returned abortion-rights proponents to the state and, in particular, to the judiciary. At times, abortion-rights advocates attempted to use state-based means to win dramatic gains against their adversaries. The National Organization for Women (NOW) tried to use federal anti-racketeering (or RICO) laws, which were created to fight organized crime, to criminalize specific anti-abortion tactics and organizations. More commonly, abortion-rights activists sought to obtain court orders and legislation that governed how anti-abortion protests could occur—for example, establishing specific distances that needed to be maintained between activists and clinic doorways.When clinics and abortion-rights groups succeeded in securing injunctions and other legal measures against their opponents, anti-abortion activists did not cower. Instead, they fought back with a legal strategy of their own. Anti-abortion activists around the country began challenging the restrictions by arguing that such measures violated their constitutional right to free speech. The combination of pervasive clinic-front activism, available legal resources, and crosscutting First Amendment questions touched off a wave of cases that disproportionately occupied the United States Supreme Court’s docket.

…

Taken together, these conflicts illustrate the rise and fall of the most visible, participatory, and overtly contentious period of abortion politics in America. The eventual subsidence of the street politics of abortion in response to clinics’ and abortion-rights advocates’ legal victories, however, did not mark the end of the anti-abortion movement or abortion politics. Like flowing water that hits an obstruction, efforts in the conflict were merely diverted to a different course. Activists from both sides of the conflict have thus—often literally—moved from the streets to continue the fight in state legislative halls and courtrooms around the country. Williams, Schenck, and Hill trace and explain this path, unpacking reasons for the resilience of abortion politics while also showing how these events matter for the institutionalization of the New Christian Right more broadly. Through these cases we see how abortion-rights activists have largely taken a defensive stance that reacts to, rather than initiates action against, their opponents. In the decades since Roe, the abortion-rights movement has yet to find a way to take the offensive, control the political discussion, or sustain popular involvement. They have come to be both behind and significantly subject to the anti-abortion movement’s actions. As a result, they show no signs of being able to slow, let alone end, the ongoing movement-countermovement conflict over abortion. Rather, they can only perpetuate it.While one side of these cases is illustrative of a movement that faces difficulty in spite of its successes, the other side provides examples of a movement that is in many ways successful in spite of its failures. These cases demonstrate the resilience of anti-abortion activists and show a movement that is both entrepreneurial and developing in ways that have significant ramifications for the broader Religious Right’s place in American politics.

UPDATE: After hearing the oral arguments presented on Wednesday (January 15), many commentators predict that the Supreme Court will ultimately rule to overturn Hill v. Colorado and strike down the Massachusetts law imposing a buffer zone around clinic entrances. See Josh Wilson's op-ed in The Washington Postfor more on what this signifies for anti-abortion activists and their opponents.

Region-wide tumult has kept Middle East Studies researchers and scholars at attention, but professor and SUP author, Frances Hasso, asserts that the popular narrative of crisis and uprising has produced a certain tunnel vision in the field. With the rise of more short-form scholarship—video, social and online media—and the seemingly constant surge of protests, revolts, and war that has sent many scholars scurrying from one area of study to the next, Hasso posits that research on the region may become less sophisticated and more monolithic. In this brief podcast she offers her 2 cents on the current landscape of Middle East Studies scholarship.

It’s a new year and a new season for Stanford University Press, which of course means a new catalog! Now available for perusing, the Spring 2014 catalog features two co-published art books, a genre-bending memoir from a Parisian psychoanalyst, a book on botched executions that received two thumbs up from bestselling author, Scott Turow, and much more. Take a gander at the online version here and read on below for a few highlights this month.Out this month:

The most ambitious and diverse survey of the book arts published to date, Book Art Object 2 serves as a record of the third biennial Codex Book Fair and Symposium, "The Fate of the Art," held in Berkeley, California in 2011. The book showcases 300 projects by 140 artists and printers, and also presents a selection of the papers delivered at the 2009 and 2011 symposium lectures.

The centerpiece of The Case of Mistress Mary Hampson is the autobiographical narrative of a 17th-century woman in an abusive and violent marriage. In it, Mary recounts various dramatic and stressful episodes from her decades-long marriage and her strategies for dealing with it. The harrowing tale contains scenes of physical abuse, mob violence, abandonment, flight, and destitution and the accompanying discussion of her life provides chilling evidence of the vulnerability of seventeenth-century women and the flawed legal mechanisms that were supposed to protect them.

Historically the term "war crime" struck some as redundant and others as oxymoronic: redundant because war itself is criminal; oxymoronic because war submits to no law. More recently, the remarkable trend toward the juridification of warfare has emerged, as law has sought to stretch its dominion over every aspect of the of armed struggle. Law and War explores the cultural, historical, spatial, and theoretical dimensions of the relationship between law.

Winner of the Conference on Latin American History's 2010 Mexican History Book Prize.

The first full-length study of black African slaves and other people of African descent in the Spanish colonial province of Yucatan, The Black Middle explores such topics as slavery and freedom, militia service and family life, bigamy and witchcraft, and the ways in which Afro-Yucatecans interacted with Mayas and Spaniards. Restall concludes that, in numerous ways, Afro-Yucatecans lived and worked in a middle space between—but closely connected to—Mayas and Spaniards.

Winner of the 2012 Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award (non-US).

Unlike most studies of the Sino-Japanese War, which are presented from the perspective of the West, The Battle for China brings together Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars to provide a comprehensive and multifaceted overview of the military operations that shaped much of what happened in political, economic, and cultural realms. The volume's diverse contributors consider the course and the nature of military operations, from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to the final campaigns of 1945.

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